Your most hated gaming mechanics/ gameplay designs

SeantheMan

Personally I hate,

Small Change - looking through a drawer or body and getting 5 coins, or 8 credits. Especially when items are 100-1000's of credits...and you can easily get or sell items for much more later. It's even worse when you are STILL picking up this crap in Late game.
Recent offenders that I played that instantly come to mind are Deus Ex :MD and Dishonored (1).


Inconsistencies with walls/terrain Being able to scale buildings or climb or hang from impossible ledges....but being stuck because you can't climb over a head high gate/wall.

There are many more, but I'm just throwing out these for the moment

Recent threads I think I've seen Karma systems, level systems, QTE's etc discussed.
I don't really mind them as long as they're done well though.

I'm also getting weary of 'cover based' shooting. I think it's time for it to die/take a break or something.

Dcully

Modern gaming in general with their almost 100% hold your hand type gameplay, i really hate this BS that seemed to start with console games.

Korvanica

Any mechanic can work well if it suits the game and is properly done.

100% agree with cully on the handholding bull****. Some tutorials are way too long these days! All the recent sim/tycoon games are WAY too easy now too!

My biggest gripe is badly implemented mechanics. Currently losing my mind with battlefield and not being able to consistently vault over walls !

Retr0gamer

Adding mechanics halfway through a game because it suits.

Be more like Nintendo, have base mechanics and use them in interesting ways. Don't shoe horn in a stealth section that is broken and requires a menu to pop up to tell you the new controls.

Pac1Man

Set pieces and escort missions.

kunst nugget

Unskippable cutscenes at the start of hard boss levels when you're going to have to watch the same thing over and over again…

Weird mini-games that have no rhyme or reason like the rhythm section in God of War 3.

Hacking mini-games always seem to be a pain in the hole as well. Grand once or twice but when you end up doing it what seems like hundreds of times in the likes of Bioshock, it drains all enjoyment from a game.

A.I party in a game where it feels like they are stealing your kills.

pumpkin4life

Quick time events.

Fùcking quick time events.

animaal

Grinding.

Instead, if I have to earn some new asset/skill, award it because of something that I've achieved.

E.g. Award me something because I've managed to kill some super-strong enemy. This may require me to put in hours of practice to overcome, but at least it doesn't feel like an arbitrary punishment for wanting to play your game.

Mr. CooL ICE

Stealth missions in non-stealth games *.

I always spent ages hidden and looking at patrol routes. I slowly move out from my hiding place and then accidentally jump against a wall or something, alerting guards and everything instantly going to sh1te.



* latest wolfenstein being the only game I've played where it doesn't matter

Stone Deaf 4evr

Monster closets - or doors where enemies will keep spawning out of forever until you move past some invisible line on the floor.


Also - Call of Duty games - stop killing the character I'm playing as. It was amazing in modern warfare 1, theres no need to have it in every other game since.

gizmo

The enemy respawning system for Outposts in Far Cry 2. Having the entire encampment respawn when I move X distance away where X is a number less than the range of their AK47s.

The cover system in Kane & Lynch. It was completely binary so if an enemy was "in cover", regardless of whether you could see them and shoot at them, they were invincible.

Planet Scanning in Mass Effect 2. I never thought any system would make me miss the Mako from the first game.

Gears of War, a series where the main characters, despite being highly skilled instruments of death, cannot run and talk over their in-ear radios at the same time. I've yet to see any explanation given for this. I could understand if it was for level streaming purposes but between the various iterations it's never really been obvious that's the case.

Generally speaking? All of the ones listed here.

Dcully wrote: »

Modern gaming in general with their almost 100% hold your hand type gameplay, i really hate this BS that seemed to start with console games.

It's a little more complicated than that. It really started when companies started tracking metrics in games and analyzing completion rates and when and where people gave up on certain titles. Combine that with the rising cost of development and reliance on focus testing on the publisher side and we're left with the current situation where content is kept tight and completable with a low barrier of entry to ensure it has a broad appeal. For a particularly galling example, check out the retrospective of the cancelled Legacy of Kain sequel and Square Enix's input regarding the difficulty level.

Generic Dreadhead

Siphoning off stuff that was in the base game, so that when the next version comes out, they can sell it as DLC.

I'm looking at you The Sims 4.... taking stuff like babies and pools and what not out.

F**k. That. Noise!

dickiepower

Dying that's not really dying like in the old days. Now it seems to be a case of re-spawing a couple of meters away or from one of the numerous checkpoints and continuing where you left off with no consequences.

kunst nugget

gizmo wrote: »

It's a little more complicated than that. It really started when companies started tracking metrics in games and analyzing completion rates and when and where people gave up on certain titles. Combine that with the rising cost of development and reliance on focus testing on the publisher side and we're left with the current situation where content is kept tight and completable with a low barrier of entry to ensure it has a broad appeal. For a particularly galling example, check out the retrospective of the cancelled Legacy of Kain sequel and Square Enix's input regarding the difficulty level.

Bah, it's much easier to blame console games. Console Players! I fart in their general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

eeguy

Games where every mission is just following someone around, a la CoD and Battlefield.

"Go here, go there, follow me!"

I thought I was the main character in this game.

death1234567

• Cut scenes at the start of games. I just bought the game and I want to play it not sit through 30 minutes of cut scenes.
  
• Film grain. What moron thought adding something that makes the game look worse was a good idea? In Titanfall 2 you can't even turn it off so it ruins the whole game.
  
• Anything that involves me pushing button during a cut scene. Oh you forgot to push X so you died and now have to sit through the cut scene all over again.
  
• Re-Generating health. Having to pickup health packs or play carefully because you are low on health is fun. Sitting in a corner for 3 seconds while you instantly recover from 9 bullet wounds is not.

YouSavedMyLife

dickiepower wrote: »

Dying that's not really dying like in the old days. Now it seems to be a case of re-spawing a couple of meters away or from one of the numerous checkpoints and continuing where you left off with no consequences.

This x10! Currently playing The Division. When my team got wiped in one of the dungeons/missions/instances i fully expected we would have to re run the whole thing. Nope. We all respawned right back into the fight without losing cash, experience or gear. Maybe it changes at higher levels but really removes the tension when there is no fear of dying.

Its what makes games like Dark Souls so enjoyable. Running around with a tonne of Souls looking for the next bonfire. Then losing all those souls and resetting your progress to the last bonfire upon death. Its great!

bigphil2

Invisible Walls

Turn Based Combat

Stupid Friendly AI (Ellie in TLOU im looking at you!)

Digital Solitude

Agree with bigphil on Ellie

Turn based combat is a whole genre though, you're missing out!

Any reason to have a limit on the number of lives or attempts at a level, be it Mario or a free mobile game.

I think Dead Space and Resi 4 are the only over the shoulder shooters I've enjoyed, i generally can't hack that for too long.

5uspect

Quick time events - why bother? Similarly you have pointless 'Press X to pay respects' type lazy cut scenes. Are some developers seriously that afraid that unless the player is pressing a button that they're not enjoying the game?

Super heavily scripted games like Uncharted where you have no room for trial and error are frustrating. The campaigns in BF3 & 4 are guilty of this, you've got a multiplayer mode where you are free to try almost anything but in SP you will stand there, boxed on by NPCs talking ****e, while the awful scripting bugs out all round you.

Tutorials. WTF were they thinking in Assassins Creed 3? It felt like one massive tutorial. Just stick it in the VR missions or turn it into a joke like Blood Dragon.

Shooting galleries. The original Uncharted games are awful for these overlong firefights and bullet sponged, tho they seem to have learned from this in 4.

Finally is the seemingly ever decreasing scope of modern games. Modern Deus Ex games are a shadow of the first, the same goes for Thief, as well as the endless shooters and empty open world games. I'd love to see a densely packed game confined to a single city block.

Sieghardt

Rubber banding in racing games, completely ruins games with a single mechanic

level scaling too for similar reasons

Venom

NPC escort missions especially in MMO's where the character in question is super weak yet go out of their way to aggro every damm mob in the area

Stealth missions in non stealth games that result in having to redo the mission/level over and over and over.

Cut scenes that can't be skipped :mad:

Penn

"Walk with me, and I will spew not-all-that-important exposition in your face while you hold the analogue stick not fully or you'll go ahead of me but also not slightly or you'll fall behind, all the while you pray some other NPC doesn't get in my way and make me get stuck somewhere"

Assassin's Creed games were unbelievably shocking for this.

Cover-based shooters, especially with regenerating health. Shoot for a while then duck for while; rince and repeat.

Spec-Ops: The Line and Mass Effect spring to mind. Absolutely dreadful chore-like combat.

Stone Deaf 4evr

Ooh, just thought of another one, elevators (mass effect), doors that require a cutscene to open (gears of war), large blank areas with nothing in them (destiny) - all doing a piss poor job of hiding loading screens.

Penn

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

Ooh, just thought of another one, elevators (mass effect), doors that require a cutscene to open (gears of war), large blank areas with nothing in them (destiny) - all doing a piss poor job of hiding loading screens.

The elevators in Mirrors Edge 1 p*ssed me off no-end. Every level had them, and because they were so blatantly hiding a loading screen instead of just loading, it definitely made it feel like it took longer than it should have.

Just put a loading screen in. It's fine.

SeantheMan

bigphil2 wrote: »

Stupid Friendly AI (Ellie in TLOU im looking at you!)

This, but also when the mechanics don't APPLY to your partner/AI buddy.

I have to crouch and sneak and if they see or hear me I'm dead.
But your buddy will walk in plain sight or do stupid things and the AI won't notice. I understand why it's like that...but it's immersion breaking and it annoys me no end. Your bullet sponge squads in the COD games too...and MOH...especially the early ones.

Manning3000

First Person view . . . . . I just can't!

H3llR4iser

Jeez, where to start.

You need a key for this door - Main culprit the Elder Scrolls saga ( probably just because it's the only Fantasy RPG series I play); Often found in some old, abandoned and damp dungeon. I am playing as a 2 meters tall Viking with a 35Kg battleaxe in his hands or a earth-shattering mage who can resurrect the dead and incinerate an army with a gesture of her hand...but need a key for that flimsy, moldy, rotten wooden door. Right.

Cookie-cutter exploits The devs meant well, introducing various classes builds, ship configurations, whatever that was; But players quickly figured out there's one combination that trumps everything else all the time; Each time you enter a game, it's 19 players running the exact same thing and the one who's different is dead. Seen anywhere from MMORPGs to racing games.

Juggling in fightig games If I wanted to play pinball, I'd play pinball. Enough said.

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Escorting anyone anywhere. Just no. Unless the ai is smarter than I am, pfo.

Saipanne

When items are too cheap, or its too easy to hoard money. It makes money meaningless, after some time. Resources should always be reasonably finite.

Sudden Valley

Enemies levelling up with you (as your character reaches higher levels so do all your enemies)- prevalent in Skyrim and the fallout series. It takes the enjoyment out of improving your character if even at the end of the game all enemies becoming super freaks and take forever to kill.

The prevalence of the Arkham Batman series types of fistfights in a number of games in which the only trick is spamming the "counter" button.

lawlolawl

Games where the entire story is told by someone talking to you through an earpiece telling where to go, what button to push next and what it will do.

I picked up Doom a couple of days ago and this aspect is really starting to ruin my enjoyment of the game. It's making it feel exactly like every other single player action game campaign from the past decade.

Devs, just don't bother. If your story can be conveyed through the medium of a one sided conversation then it probably isn't very good and you should just cut the inane chatter and have text at the beginning of a level to tell the player what to do.

Penn

Spend ages solving puzzles, making huge jumps, crawling through caves/wrecks that haven't seen daylight in centuries...

Find modern day equipment/currency/items and leave the hidden dungeon through a door that leads right outside.

Glico Man

The dreaded words "follow your target" send shivers down my spine. I still remember those from the first Assassins Creed game. The constant repetition of those have burned themselves into my memory. I have no fond memory of that mission type.

Escort missions like others have said too. Sweet lord... if the AI actually wasn't suicidal and had some semblance of thought to try to stay alive they wouldn't be as bad. Seemingly any sort of escort mission the person runs directly into gunfire or enemies and whatnot.

Even worse are escort missions teamed with stealth missions. "There's enemies over there, I'll run straight into them and cause you to fail the mission". Fcuk off devs. At least Naughty Dog solved this issue in TLOU.

Canis Lupus

Escort missions but for a different reason and that's because 9/10 times your characters default walk is too slow for the escort and your run is too fast so you have to run stop run stop run stop run stop.

CastorTroy

Escort missions when it's not the main goal of the game ICo is good. Spartan Total Warrior is hell.

Shooting Galleries. This was my main gripe with Uncharted 3 and Dead Space 3. Move, cutscene, open area with waist high boxes, constants bad guys

Unfair enemy advantages. By this, I mean enemies being able to see you despite you not being able to see them. Once again, the one level that really annoyed me in Uncharted 3 was at the end of the desert where there were loads of enemies with guns, grenade launchers and sniper rifles in a sand cloud where everyone was able to shoot me with perfect aim but I could only make out 1 or 2 of them at a time.

Following. Not in the way mentioned above where you have to folow someone and liten to them to complete the mission, but when you have to follow them to a door that you know is the destination and you can get there quickly, but you have to wait for them to unlock it.

ShadowHearth

Sudden Valley wrote: »

Enemies levelling up with you (as your character reaches higher levels so do all your enemies)- prevalent in Skyrim and the fallout series. It takes the enjoyment out of improving your character if even at the end of the game all enemies becoming super freaks and take forever to kill.

The prevalence of the Arkham Batman series types of fistfights in a number of games in which the only trick is spamming the "counter" button.

I completely agree on this with Bethesda rpgs. This was one of the biggest reason I just did not played oblivion. Hey look, bandits are now wearing all this beasty awesome armour, because I leveled up my jumping...
Though I have to admit, wow did this scaling thing and it's actually perfect. while you leveling, zones adjust to you, so you can tackle any zone in any order and when you mixed level it stays on that last level. Your gear improves and you become stronger, but enemies still stay same. You do feel like you getting stronger and more badass. It used to take me ages to kill one mob with my paladin at 110 level with just fresh gear. Now i am high level geared and I only 10 of mobs and just shred them to pieces.

dreamers75

H3llR4iser wrote: »

You need a key for this door - Main culprit the Elder Scrolls saga ( probably just because it's the only Fantasy RPG series I play); Often found in some old, abandoned and damp dungeon. I am playing as a 2 meters tall Viking with a 35Kg battleaxe in his hands or a earth-shattering mage who can resurrect the dead and incinerate an army with a gesture of her hand...but need a key for that flimsy, moldy, rotten wooden door. Right.

.

Retr0gamer

lawlolawl wrote: »

Games where the entire story is told by someone talking to you through an earpiece telling where to go, what button to push next and what it will do.

I picked up Doom a couple of days ago and this aspect is really starting to ruin my enjoyment of the game. It's making it feel exactly like every other single player action game campaign from the past decade.

Devs, just don't bother. If your story can be conveyed through the medium of a one sided conversation then it probably isn't very good and you should just cut the inane chatter and have text at the beginning of a level to tell the player what to do.

If you are playing Doom for the story you're doing it wrong.

CastorTroy

Another thing is grinding just to prolong the game. I can kind of understand it in RPGs or whatever to gain XP, but No More Heroes, Mad World and Anarchy Reigns are 3 fun games I liked but had to keep doing the same minigames over and pver until I got enough money to progress.

jacksie66

This post has been deleted.

Osmosis Jones

"Sixth Sense" vision mode I'm sick of games thinking they don't have to be intuitive and instead just telling you to hold a button and get x-ray vision. Really annoyed me when I found out they had it in TLOU and played a fair bit of the game for a second time around without it while wearing headphones, it was much harder but a lot more engaging.

Games unnecessarily taking control out of your hands Tomb Raider 2013 did this whenever you would vault over a wall our crawl through a gap, the game would stop letting you control it and go into a two second animation, leading to that moment where Lara Croft just stands still and you realise you're back in control.

SeantheMan

Torches on the walls in dungeons , especially dungeons where noone has obviously lived or been for years on end, but someone is tending to all the the torches of the world keeping them alight.
At least have them there but out, and the player has to light them as he goes, or find some alternative light sources.

lawlolawl

Retr0gamer wrote: »

If you are playing Doom for the story you're doing it wrong.

Wasn't playing it for the story, that was sort of my point

Finished it last night anyway. Saw all the game had to offer by the halfway point and just wanted it to be over by the last third.

Not a bad game but there's only so many times you can find a room full of monsters entertaining.

H3llR4iser

CastorTroy wrote: »

Unfair enemy advantages. By this, I mean enemies being able to see you despite you not being able to see them. Once again, the one level that really annoyed me in Uncharted 3 was at the end of the desert where there were loads of enemies with guns, grenade launchers and sniper rifles in a sand cloud where everyone was able to shoot me with perfect aim but I could only make out 1 or 2 of them at a time.

Ohhh, you should play the original X-Com from 1993. Full squad wipeouts before you could even see an alien were not exactly uncommon...and you wouldn't dare going on a night time mission, that equated to sending your soldiers to the meat grinder

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I completely agree on this with Bethesda rpgs. This was one of the biggest reason I just did not played oblivion. Hey look, bandits are now wearing all this beasty awesome armour, because I leveled up my jumping...

Wasn't always like this, it did actually start with Oblivion AFAIK; Older ones up until Morrowind had static enemies which resulted in a very interesting "no go areas" scenario until you were decently leveled up. Now, if TES3 didn't have that "You missed. You missed. You missed. You missed." combat system...

And Cliff racers.

lawlolawl wrote: »

Finished it last night anyway. Saw all the game had to offer by the halfway point and just wanted it to be over by the last third.

Not a bad game but there's only so many times you can find a room full of monsters entertaining.

Pfft...tell that to 1994 me, nothing more entertaining that coming back from school, firing up (eventually literally, as a capacitor in the PSU gave out with a bang) the trusty 486DX, type CD DOOM<enter> DOOM<enter> and listen to the MIDI sountrack "blasting" through the 0.05W AA battery powered speakers, while Imp after Imp fell victim of my rocket launcher

um7y1h83ge06nx

Dcully wrote: »

Modern gaming in general with their almost 100% hold your hand type gameplay, i really hate this BS that seemed to start with console games.

bigphil2

"Press E to Mark Respect"

Just F*ck Off yeah?

lawlolawl

H3llR4iser wrote: »

Pfft...tell that to 1994 me, nothing more entertaining that coming back from school, firing up (eventually literally, as a capacitor in the PSU gave out with a bang) the trusty 486DX, type CD DOOM<enter> DOOM<enter> and listen to the MIDI sountrack "blasting" through the 0.05W AA battery powered speakers, while Imp after Imp fell victim of my rocket launcher

The original Doom had interesting level design and wasn't just corridor - monster arena - corridor - monster arena over and over.

pumpkin4life

lawlolawl wrote: »

The original Doom had interesting level design and wasn't just corridor - monster arena - corridor - monster arena over and over.

Another great thing about the original Doom: Incredibly balanced choice of weapons which all had their strengths/weaknesses depending on where/what you were up against. On the harder difficulties, you had to be good at this to survive lol.

For most modern shooters its basically machine gun all the way.